Lab gets funding to put 3D goggles on praying mantises

Mantis attacks can determine how they process scenes in 3D.

It sounds like the kind of research project that a future a Congressman might hold up as an example of wasteful government spending: gluing a praying mantis to a stick and putting mini-3D goggles on it. But this project is very real and pretty neat, and it should actually tell us something about neurobiology. (Plus, it's all being funded by a private foundation.)

Praying mantises aren't just unusually large insects; they're extremely efficient predators that have even been known to catch and eat birds. This requires both a lightning-quick strike and the visual acuity to direct the strike towards the prey. Researchers at Newcastle University, led by Jennifer Read, want to test out the limits of the mantis' vision. To do that, they'll try to determine how the animals reconstruct a 3D scene.

Right now, as the video below demonstrates, that involves placing a mantis (glued to a stick so it doesn't move around) in front of a television monitor and filming its strikes. But the lab is now attaching the world's smallest 3D goggles to a mantis and attempting to manipulate the 3D scene by sending each of its eyes slightly different images. It may turn out that the insect's brain operates much like a vertebrate's, using the physical separation of the eyes and the difference in perspective it involves to figure out locations in 3D. If so, it would indicate that the amount of neural horsepower needed to do so is much more limited than we might have thought.

An alternative possibility is that the insects operate under a completely different visual processing system. "If we find that the way mantises process 3D vision is very different to the way humans do it, then that could open up all kinds of possibilities to create much simpler algorithms for programming 3D vision into robots," said Vivek Nityananda, another researcher involved with the project.

It sounds like the kind of research project that a future a Congressman might hold up as an example of wasteful government spending: gluing a praying mantis to a stick and putting mini-3D goggles on it. But this project is very real and pretty neat, and it should actually tell us something about neurobiology. (Plus, it's all being funded by a private foundation.)

Wouldn't it be amazing if such considerations would stop a Congressman from doing that?

It sounds like the kind of research project that a future a Congressman might hold up as an example of wasteful government spending: gluing a praying mantis to a stick and putting mini-3D goggles on it. But this project is very real and pretty neat, and it should actually tell us something about neurobiology. (Plus, it's all being funded by a private foundation.)

Wouldn't it be amazing if such considerations would stop a Congressman from doing that?

But again wouldn't you then have to break down (simplify) the eventual report's conclusion into a form the Congressman could understand?

I am no expert in insect vision, but I always thought the segmented eye didn't work entirely as a unit like the human eye. Shouldn't it be able to see more than one perspective with a single eye?

Guess we'll have to do some research to find out!

Now that I think about it, if they could resolve 3D spaces with one eye, they probably wouldn't have two. Eyes are expensive.

Eyes on opposite sides of the head are better <strike>rangefinders</strike> for 3D vision than a cyclopean eye, and on a guess a single pair-of-goggles type eye would provide low value information from the middle, thus no pro survival value for that type of eye and some anti survival from the extra weight, etc.

OK - I know where this is headed. The fly lab builds tiny pheromone bombs for the flies to confuse the mantises. The mantis lab develops tiny gas masks to protect the mantises. The fly lab creates heat vision goggles so they can see the smirks on the mantises faces. The mantis lab counters with water-cooled body suits to make them invisible to heat vision goggles. The fly lab mounts tiny laser beams weapons the on flies hoping to blind the mantises. The mantis lab adds a highly reflective coating to their body suits to reflect the laser beams. The fly lab counters with abdomen mounted radar systems. The mantis lab develops stealth technology for their body suits. The fly lab hacks into the mantis lab and tries to delete all their precious mantis files. The mantis lab detects the intrusion and gets really pissed. They craftily let the flies discover fake plans for their stealth technology. The fly lab spends the rest of their funding developing a new bogus radar system with a built-in computer virus that actually pinpoints all the flies outfitted with the new radar systems on Google maps. The fly lab in a desperate attempt, aligns itself with the mosquito, gnat, and horsefly lab who have been secretly developing chemical weapons against the frog lab. Fortunately, the frog lab has developed an ultrasonic device that monitors all communications in and out of the mosquito, gnat, and horsefly lab and alerts the mantis lab. The mantis lab is now confronted with the nuclear option... (and history repeats itself)

What type of glue are they using? (Something that can be dissolved easily without hurting the little guys, hopefully)

Do these mantis's (manti?) go on to live long, happy lives after the weird "alien abduction" they go through here?

Hi. I'm a researcher on the project. We use beeswax to fix the glasses on. And it is indeed easy to remove after which the mantis go back to leading their lives. They typically live up to a year in the lab.

I am no expert in insect vision, but I always thought the segmented eye didn't work entirely as a unit like the human eye. Shouldn't it be able to see more than one perspective with a single eye?

Hi. You're right the compound eyes that mantises have are different from human eyes and each facet sees light in a different direction. We're trying to see how they combine the input from each eye to calculate depth.

I am no expert in insect vision, but I always thought the segmented eye didn't work entirely as a unit like the human eye. Shouldn't it be able to see more than one perspective with a single eye?

Hi. You're right the compound eyes that mantises have are different from human eyes and each facet sees light in a different direction. We're trying to see how they combine the input from each eye to calculate depth.

Woah, I got a reply from one of the actual researchers? Ars community really is awesome. Thanks for taking your time to answer me! Edit: I wonder how that peculiarity of their eyes changes the way they interact with the world. Some days ago I was reading a fascinating article about the literature surrounding the mental lives of invertebrates and plants. Do you happen to have any suggested reading on that subject?